J Wray & Nephew is to discontinue distributing the Moet Hennessy Cognac brand and come November 1 replace it with the Courvoisier brand its parent company Gruppo Campari acquired from Suntory Global Spirits in April this year.

Campari paid US$1.3 billion for Courvoisier to have its own cognac brand in what was the last and most expensive acquisition by its former chief executive Bob Kunze-Concewitz. Campari is now setting about the job of revitalising Courvoisier’s sales across the 190 markets in which it products can be found, including here in Jamaica.

“We are going to let go of Hennessy…because we bought Courvoisier,” Jean-Philippe Beyer, chairman of J Wray & Nephew announced in an interview on August 19 with the Jamaica Observer.

The move is part of Campari’s plan to rebuild the Courvoisier brand that had gone off the boil in recent years as the traditional big four Cognac houses have increasingly become Hennessy and the rest. The big four Cognac houses are Moet Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell, and Courvoisier. Together, they play in a market worth more than US$4 billion and are responsible for roughly nine out of every 10 bottles consumed around the world.

But Courvoisier’s share of that market has been declining. It sold 1.2 million nine-litre cases in 2022, down by 19. per cent on 2021, according to The Brand Champions 2023 report. According to Campari, sales declined again, this time by 33 per cent in the 10 months to the end of October 2023.

Beyer said Moet Hennessy was not happy with the news that Campari will no longer distribute its cognac and acknowledged “it may take a few years” for Campari to rebuild Courvoisier.

“We are going to have to build our own brand and we know how to build brands because that is what we do…so it’s going to be a concerted effort because we are talking about a global effort, but when you pay US$1.3 billion for a brand like the group did, it’s not to just let it sit on a shelf,” Beyer pointed out.

“We are going to put a lot of efforts in US, Asia, and the other different markets and here as well. We are going to bring along Courvoisier like everything we do, like we did with Moet Hennessy,” he added. J Wray & Nephew will be responsible for building the brand in the Caribbean and Central America.

The cognac category is poised to become the group’s “fourth major leg along with apéritifs, bourbon and tequila”, Campari’s former CEO Bob Kunze-Concewitz said in December.

J Wray & Nephew has been crucial in building the Moet Hennessy brand in Jamaica. It is not clear at this time which company will be distributing Moet Hennessy in Jamaica after October 1.